Ambassador David H. Wilkins' Statement on United States Mission Canada Participation in Earth Hour 2008

Earth Hour - 8pm -9pm, 29th March 2008

We're pleased to be participating in this creative initiative to highlight the struggle against climate change and demonstrate how, working together, we can all make a difference in saving the world's precious energy resources. We've encouraged our personnel across Canada to turn their lights off for an hour on Saturday, March 29th at 8:00 p.m. as part of a worldwide voluntary effort to reduce energy consumption.

In fact, the U.S. Embassy Ottawa is working to reduce its energy consumption on a number of fronts. We recently hosted a 'Green Day' for our staff to educate ourselves on steps we can take to increase our energy efficiency - at work and in our households- and make our own environmental 'footprint' smaller in Ottawa. We have conducted a waste audit to establish benchmarks and are constantly looking for ways to improve our recycling measures already in place.

Like Canadians, Americans believe in the power of the individual to make a difference where we work and live.

The Earth Hour website is at www.earthhour.org/.